


Deepening Drifts

by surprisepink



Category: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Based on their paired ending, F/M, Post-Canon, ambiguously requited love, smiling through loneliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:47:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28301826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surprisepink/pseuds/surprisepink
Summary: More than friends, less than lovers.
Relationships: Cugar | Cormag/Turner | Tana
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9
Collections: Nagamas Gifts





	Deepening Drifts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MarkoftheAsphodel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarkoftheAsphodel/gifts).



> Happy Nagamas to MarkoftheAsphodel! I loved all of your prompts but I can't resist a lil longing.

Her memories of winters past are fond ones that stretch back through childhood. There were late nights spent listening to the wind rustle through the trees outside or watching snow bluster and blow past narrow windows. There were mornings when she woke up to nothing but white. There was a chill that didn’t bother her one bit as she took her first steps outside, marring the clean canvas of the snowfall with tiny footprints. In each memory, Innes is by her side, holding her close and reassuring her that the wind can’t reach her, or calling after her as she runs through snowdrifts and almost falls down hills.

Those times must have been long ago indeed, when she was very small. She wasn’t very old when her brother started to have less time for her.

She knows that the joy she felt is not always shared by the people, who have no castle to keep them safe and no furs to warm their bodies. She reminds her brother of this sometimes; he will do all that he can, he says, but there’s so much to do now that he’s king. Still, it bothers her. A lot of things bother her now that they’ve saved the world and had the time to reflect on it and realize that it hasn’t changed much at all. The citizens of Frelia still get hungry faster than they can be fed, Innes still runs himself ragged doing his best, and Tana... well, Tana is still just Tana.

Princesses don’t gain new titles or responsibilities when their brothers are crowned, but they can lose brothers. All she can do is be thankful that he is popular, for the time being, and so she’s only lost his attention, not his life.

Things are getting better, thanks to him. Innes is a good king, willful and unyielding but kind, willing to help those in needs. And he’ll allow her just about anything she asks, knowing well that her requests will always be reasonable. The thought of it makes her grin: when they were children, he used to watch her sneaking cookies from the kitchen and told her _once I’m king, I won’t let you get away with anything_.

Now that she’s grown, there’s only one thing that she wants, and it’s got nothing to do with their family’s riches or the king’s power. All she asks of him is that he never pressure her to seek out a husband, nor find him one himself.

It seems simple enough, but that kind of thing is a challenge for some men, especially concerned older brothers. But he doesn’t seem to mind: if anything, he’s glad his baby sister isn’t going to run off and leave him without her, the closest member of the family that he’s got. Innes hasn’t married, either, though there’s talk of finding him a wife to carry on the family line.

She wonders if her brother has ever been in love. It’s hard to imagine who might have possibly captured his heart, but though he rarely shows it, he has so much affection to give. If he has been in love, he might understand her.

If he has been in love, he will understand the reason why she’d rather not marry. Not now.

She misses him, sometimes, though he’s not gone. They so rarely have time to speak in private, and she’s never been brave enough to ask if he understands.

L’Arachel sends her novels sometimes, stories of damsels in distress who are swept off their feet by kind and noble men. They both have a laugh about it on the rare occasions that they’re able to spend time together, because both of them are better at being the ones who do the rescuing.

It’s a strange thing sometimes, being a princess who saves her knight, but Tana has done it for Cormag twice now. The first time was when they met as enemies on the battlefield and parted as comrades; the second time was years later, long after the demon king was defeated.

Tana’s ear for gossip proved to come in handy then, after years of listening for his name. She found him in some grimy pub when he happened to travel to Frelia, far enough away from the castle that it must have been a coincidence but close enough that it would only give Innes a _bit_ of a fright.

On that cold night she was a princess disguised as a merchant speaking to a hero disguised as a sellsword, and nobody around them knew how long in the making their meeting had been. Snow fell outside the window then, too. The inn Cormag meant to stay at was cold; the one that Tana had come to with a few carefully-chosen guards was, he said, far more welcoming.

Their night was joyous, though much unlike anything that took place in those novels that Tana hid beneath her mattress. He was not seductive, and she did not swoon, and in the end, all that took place was conversation. The guards fell asleep halfway through the night, so they were able to speak freely then, he of his adventures and she of current events.

( _My brother has been busy_ she said, and he nodded, understanding what it was like, though his own brother wasn’t alive to be busy any longer.)

She thought she might like it if he warmed her body as much as he did her heart that night, but he did not, and she did not ask for anything more.

The snow crunches under her feet with each step as she makes her way to the stables, with memories of snowfalls long past still vivid in her mind. There’s not much reason to remove snow from the castle grounds, other than the main paths, so it almost feels like a rebellion to shun them entirely and instead tramp across the courtyard even in woolen leggings and sturdy boots. Her footprints join countless others. The knights are training; the knights are always training.

There aren’t many wyverns in Frelia, so they didn’t have the right stable for Cormag's mount when he first arrived. Genarog isn’t picky about that sort of thing as long as he’s kept well-fed, but he still seems to appreciate that he’s not crowded into smaller pegasus quarters. People gossip about how quickly the new stable was built alongside the many other things they’ve stared to say about Cormag, some of them scandalous and all of which Tana ignores.

The stable is a warm, welcome reprieve from the cold. It almost feels like a blast of heat as Tana steps in, and she’s glad for it. They meet here often, though it’s never planned. She’s memorized his schedule, more or less.

(Princesses ought to know their knights well, she reasons.)

But she pretends it was a coincidence, and he in turn pretends he hadn’t been hoping she’d come.

“Hail, Sir Cormag,” she says, peeking over the side of Genarog’s stall with a small grin.

Cormag stops cleaning his wyvern’s scales so that he might take a stiff bow, as any of the knights might. “Your Highness.”

The formality of it doesn’t bother her, not when he relaxes right after.

“Are things well here, Cormag? You know you can let me know if you have any requests, for you or Genarog. I know wyverns don’t do well in the snow.”

Cormag shakes his head. “He’ll get used to it soon enough. He prefers warm climates of course, but it’s easy enough to keep him warm here. You and the king have provided for us well.”

“It’s the least we can do for one of our most valued knights. Nobody who attacks Frelia will be expecting we have any wyverns. Though I’d rather it never come to that, of course.”

“And I as well. But Princess... please don’t worry about that kind of thing. It is my duty, not yours, to know of warfare.”

“You sound like my brother!” Tana says, pouting. “And both of you know that I’ll stick my nose into whatever I want to, with or without permission.”

Cormag rarely laughs, but he stifles a chuckle now, and Tana’s heart skips a beat knowing that she’s the one who caused it. “As you will, then. But I should be asking in return what I might do for you.”

There are a thousand answers she might give to that question, but none seem quite right, nor entirely appropriate. Instead, she tells him what she is also, in all honesty, reminding herself of:

“People already think that I show you favor. They have... suspicions. It’s better we do not kindle that fire further,” she says. She does not quite believe it.

L’Arachel’s novels describe heartbreak, too. Is that what she feels when he agrees and bids her a curt farewell?

It is a hard thing indeed to accept, this feeling like she is once again losing someone standing right in front of her.


End file.
